In regards to eating meat

[Diana]

I just do not believe my store purchase will do anything to transform the mind of a slaughter house employee. I don't.

Your purchase supports the slaughter house, and the employees that work there. (Supply and demand--a very simple concept. If you buy the product, you contribute to the demand.) No one is trying to change the mind of the slaughter house employee--the idea is to make a better choice of how to supply meat, if meat must be produced: the life of the animal respected, and the life taken humanely.

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Honestly, if it isn't about changing the mind of the "inhumane" employee then is it about eliminated the employee? Again, that is a move to control, not a move to accept. Just like in the other, simpler, hypotheticals.

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What does a slaughterhouse employee have to do with it? The employee is doing a job--we don't know whether he/she is appalled by it or not. The business owner is the person who creates the slaughterhouse for profit, along with the ranchers who require it and pay them, so they can sell the meat to consumers. Without the consumers, it all goes away.

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Regarding slaughtering humans as akin to slaughtering animals, you continue to equate animals with humans while relegating plants to a seemingly secondary status of "OK to eat." I just don't agree with you that that distinction holds water.

At the risk of repeating myself, there is a marked difference between eating animals and eating plants. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the treatment and slaughter/harvest of the animals and plants is sustainable and humane. Even so, you cannot cut the leg off a cow or chicken and expect it to survive (not to mention the pain and suffering of such an act), but you can take part of a plant and it will survive. Fruit IS MADE to be eaten. All plants want their seeds spread.

The salient point here is that animals are afraid of being eaten and plants less so (if at all--I don't know). Is it not, then, logical to assume the damage inflicted by killing and eating animals is greater than of eating plants? This is to say nothing of the fear ingested from eating the animals (in the form of energy and hormones released).